FSFE Newsletter - August 2009

August traditionally is a month with a lower level of activity due to
holidays. Still, a lot of things happened under FSFE's and the
Fellowship's roofs.

Fellowship groups met in Zurich and Stuttgart, other Fellows and
volunteers manned a booth at the FrOSCon, our website now benefits from
an improved contact page, Karsten Gerloff commented on the ruling about
software patent infringement against Microsoft, and Thomas Jensch took
on the role of coordinator for our edu-team.

Fellowship meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, 26 August

On 26 August the Fellowship group of Zurich met for their traditional
Free Software summer barbecue. About 13 Fellows and other interested
people participated. Christian Holz, FSFE's Executive Director, also
joined them meeting to discuss our potential participation in
OpenExpo, the consolidation of the Swiss Fellowship group, and the
philosophical differences between Free and proprietary Software.

4th FrOSCon in St. Augustin, Germany, 22-23 August

We participated with a lively and highly populated booth at the 4th
FrOSCon in St. Augustin, Germany. Ten of our Fellows and volunteers were
present at the booth during the two days event to explain our work and
our projects. As a result new people will join the Fellowship. Matthias
Kirschner, Fellowship coordinator, and Michael Kesper, our team member,
were also interviewed by a local radio station. Michael wrote a short
post on his blog with a couple of pictures taken at FrOSCon.

Software patent infringed: Microsoft barred from selling Word

On Tuesday 11 August, Microsoft received an injunction for patent
infringement concerning an XML-related patent held by Canadian XML
specialist i4i. The injunction prevents Microsoft from selling the
2003 and 2007 versions of Word in the United States and requires the
company to pay US$ 290 million in damages. Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's
president, commented the news on his blog and focused on how damaging
software patents can be even for the biggest corporation.

New overview on our community contacts

After some redesign work, our contact page is now available with a new
section providing a better overview of our Community contacts. We
hope that these improvements will make it easier for people get in
touch with the right groups and to start becoming involved in our
community of Free Software supporters.

Fellowship meeting and KDE 4.3 release party in Stuttgart, Germany, 01 August

The Fellowship group in Stuttgart gathered together with some KDE people
to celebrate the release of KDE 4.3. The meeting started at 19:00 on
1 August and went on until midnight with about ten people discussing
about the new improvements of KDE and Free Software in general.
There was also space for a small tournament of Ksquares played on the
touch screen of a tablet PC.

In the spotlight

Thomas Jensch takes on coordination for FSFE's edu-team

FSFE's Education project aims at furthering Free Software in all
education related activities and institutions, such as kindergartens,
schools and universities. In recent years the project had been
inactive due to lack of a coordinator and workforce. Now, thanks
to Thomas Jensch, our current intern in Zurich, we will be able to
revive this important project.

Thomas accepted the role of coordinator for the edu-team as a part of
his internship and he is already working to reorganise the activities of
the project. Thomas also agreed to continue coordinating the team
after his intership ends in November.

To receive information about the progresses and news of the edu-team, it
is possible to register to the edu-eu@gnu.org mailing list, to get
in contact with the team you can send an e-mail
to edu-team < AT > fsfeurope < DOT > org

It happened in the past

Karsten Gerloff at the ATTAC Germany summer academy

In August 2005, Karsten Gerloff, now FSFE's president, was invited to
give a speech at ATTAC Germany's summer academy in Goettingen about
the developments within the World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO) and the A2K (Access To Knowledge) Treaty. At that time, Karsten
had just finished his internship with FSFE.

Upcoming events

Fellowship's booth at the Braderie de Lille, France, 05-06 September

The Fellowship will take part with a booth to the "Braderie de Lille"
(Lille's flea market) in Lille, France. FSFE and, in particular, the
Fellowship booth, will get a lot of visibility, since millions of
people from different nations take a walk on Lille's streets during
the event. The booth will be located on Place du Vieux Marché aux
chevaux. If you would like more information about this event please
send an e-mail to Benjamin Morant: